Square Enix to devote more attention to U.S., European markets

Square Enix to devote more attention to U.S., European marketsSquare Enix is reportedly looking for a publishing partner to increase its presence in North America, Europe, and other oversees markets. This means increased attention to these markets and a more varied array of genres that will appeal to their endemic gaming palates.

Square Enix is reportedly looking for a publishing partner to increase its presence in North America, Europe, and other oversees markets. This means increased attention to these markets and a more varied array of genres that will appeal to their endemic gaming palates.

While current Square Enix revenue share for overseas markets ranges from 10-20%, Square Enix expects to increase the figure to 50% after a viable partnership has been established. According to Michihiro Sasaki, senior vice-president of Square Enix, this move is imperative for the sustainability of the company in light of the stagnation of the Japanese industry. The U.S. industry is comparatively stronger and growing at a much faster rate.

"We need to seek co-operation with a US publisher - we need local content," Mr. Sasaki said at the Tokyo Game Show. "Our strength is in role-playing games and fantasy titles, so it is a bit difficult to appeal to the US market."

Mr. Sasaki recognizes the limited attention span, want of pretty, shiny graphics, and disdain for reading and/or learning of the typical American gamer, and as such expects the company to produce more action-oriented titles for the market. This could potentially translate into increased support for Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Continuing the recent trend of talking down Sony's PlayStation 3, Mr. Sasaki expressed his worry about the performance of the console. He alternatively offered praise to Nintendo for expanding the market to a greater demographic of gamers.

Here's a gem:
"Mr. Sasaki recognizes the limited attention span, want of pretty, shiny graphics, and disdain for reading and/or learning of the typical American gamer, and as such expects the company to produce more action-oriented titles for the market. This could potentially translate into increased support for Microsoft's Xbox 360."

If this is indeed the direction the company wants to go in, I will probably quit video games. Well, rather, following anything modern in video gaming.

Nels said:
If this is indeed the direction the company wants to go in, I will probably quit video games. Well, rather, following anything modern in video gaming.

It's probably not a whole new direction or even necessarily a redirection of resources (although that's possible). More than anyone by far, Square Enix has been wildly successful with the RPG genre, and it would be asinine to turn away from the genre that put them on the map.

Whatever the case, I haven't been interested in the direction they have been taking in the past 5 years. I own every Square game in the PS1 generation except Ehrgeiz, and the only PS2 games I own are FFX and FFXII. Square Enix games suck.

Man, this sort of thing makes me so mad at Squeenix. I remember during the end of the PSX's lifetime, Square Soft didn't make one bad game and they pumped out around 8 it seemed right before the PS2 was launched. Sigh, wtf has happened?

Most of the people responsible for those games left the company after their cherished creativity-inducing environment got raped up the ass by the new Square Enix board of "let's be EA and Disney combined" polymorphism pussies. The people that stayed either get a kick out of the new power they wield, or were able to adapt into mindless robots who just do whatever the management thinks is going to sell the most. Examples: Akitoshi Kawazu (hell, he had too much invested to quit then), Tetsuya Nomura (probably never held a job other than character designer at Squaresoft/Square Enix) and certainly is using the opportunity to build a name for himself.

People who realised wtf was going on and got off the boat early: Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu, various other composers, Masato Kato, Yasumi Matsuno (early as in: midway during his first major project), etc.

Of course, part of the reason so many left the new conglomerate was due to the state of the games industry around the time as it was in decline (pre-DS/Wii) and many large corporations were losing a lot of employees to startups and smaller companies. This is what led to companies like Level 5. It's also why Nobuo Uematsu and Masato Kato went freelance. However, now we're seeing companies slowly attract people again: Level 5 is getting pretty big, Mistwalker is leaving footprints, Matsuno is reported to have joined Nintendo with Monolithsoft, etc.

Er, yes, in fact the Xeno/Chrono team departed and created a company, Monolithsoft, which was recently purchased by Nintendo after Bandai-Namco lost interest. That's the whole point. Matsuno is at Nintendo. The Xeno/Chrono team is at Nintendo.

That means there's an RPG under development by Matsuno, the Xeno/Chrono team (what remains of it) and Nintendo.

Excuse the fuck me if that isn't some kind of fanboy's wet dream right there.

It's a rumour that sounds too good to not take seriously. And it's better than the previous rumours, which included "Matsuno's dead" and "Matsuno has been decapitated". So I'm running with this one for now.

Not to pop in way too late or anything but.....Ehrgeiz is surely a strange game. I never bought the game itself, but I did happen to come across one of those demos that are conviently placed in the back of the magazines with the plastic covers. lol You know, the one's you find at wal mart and all.
I only played with cloud, and the asian chick with the yo-yo.